


drew a line in the sand (to be with you)

by openmouthwideeye



Series: West Eros High [20]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-22
Updated: 2013-08-22
Packaged: 2017-12-24 08:15:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/937687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/openmouthwideeye/pseuds/openmouthwideeye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes the hardest step is facing the day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	drew a line in the sand (to be with you)

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know how I managed to psyche myself out so badly on this chapter, but yeesh. Sorry for the wait, guys. I'd still really love a week or so with this installment (I read some sections and just cringe, TBH), but hopefully I've pushed through whatever OCD was driving me up a wall and the next chapter won't take so long.
> 
> *Dedicated to Isy, who humored my issues and beta'd this to perfection. Thank you for letting me drive you crazy, even when you're sick. :D

When Brienne’s phone buzzed on the kitchen table, flashing a half forgotten image snapped months ago in the King’s Landing parking lot, her wrist knocked into her bowl, sloshing milk and cereal across the table. She hastily wiped droplets off the screen with her shirt, swallowing hard before snatching up the phone and putting it to her ear.

“Jaime?” She busied herself with sopping up the evidence of her restlessness, clearing her throat and frowning into the receiver. “What did you do to my phone?”

“Brienne.” The familiar lilt of his amusement soothed the uneasy tension she’d spent the morning cultivating. He ignored her question. “You ready?”

Brienne wrung the sponge over the sink, wishing her nerves could disappear down the drain as easily as the swirling milk.

“No,” she muttered honestly. The barbs would snag and tear and crawl beneath her skin, same as ever. Jaime would deflect the worst of the blows, and that knowledge alone made facing school nearly impossible. “But I can handle it.”

She only hoped he couldn’t hear through her bluster.

Knuckles knocked against the doorframe behind her, and Brienne started. Her father was peering uncertainly from his study, unwilling to interrupt her morning despite the intuition itching behind his glasses.

She nodded around the phone, spurring him on.

“Brienne.” Her dad paused, considering the most delicate way to voice his concerns. He cleared his throat awkwardly. “I thought your date didn’t go well.”

Her jaw locked, an instinctive bracing against the accusation. She wondered if he’d been listening, or if he’d only guessed who was waiting on the other end of the line. Uncomfortable warmth crept up her collar at the thought. Brienne felt like she was on display — Exhibit A: how to defend the boy you’re dating while he’s trapped against your cheek.

Familiar, unseen hands pressed encouragement into her spine.

“It didn’t.” She straightened, fingers squeaking against the plastic as she tucked the speaker to her jaw to muffle her words. “But it’s not – I mean – it wasn’t his fault.”

Her dad nodded, mouth pursed. He half glanced over his shoulder, and Brienne followed his gaze to the window obscured by his tall frame. She could just make out a gleam of black paint, pricking her ears to the faint rumble of an idling engine.

Brienne whirled toward the kitchen door, heart pounding, as though if she blinked Jaime would plop himself down at her sticky breakfast table—armed to the teeth with that maddening smile—and crumble her defenses. Her heart staggered as she whipped her phone back into place. “What are you doing here?”

She didn’t expect the candidness of his assertion, like he knew she would fight him on it.

“Presenting a united front.”

Her heart squeezed, unexpected and almost painful. She curled her fingers around the phone.

“Hold on,” she whispered past the tightness of her throat.

She ended the call and spent several long moments staring at her cell. It felt heavy in her palm.

_That damn phone didn’t leave his hand._

She could see the uncomprehending frustration in Tyrion’s eyes, hear Jaime’s plaintive demand in her inbox. For a moment she wished she’d yielded to her friends’ meddling, that this was already over.

She made her movements intentionally mundane, dumping out her upset breakfast, swiping the damp spot on the table with a worn dishtowel, shaking free the bits of cereal clinging to the fibers. Her phone remained clutched in her left hand, anchoring her.

“Brienne.” Her father beseeched her with the name he’d pulled from history, an overlooked battle site that had once made all the difference. For a moment she felt eight again, scraped all over and determined to master the blades beneath her feet. “Honey – be careful.”

His words squeezed past her ribs, wriggling over bone and sinew to land somewhere soft. It surprised her to realize that he was afraid of Jaime. Hovering in the doorway, unable to vocalize the fear that his daughter had dashed her internal constraints on the same waves that would drown her.

The concern hadn’t crossed her mind all morning. She nodded on autopilot, baffled by the surety that deemed his sentiment misguided.

Her dad gave her a tight smile, studying her for a long minute before retreating to his office. She wondered whether he was actually working, or if he’d be watching from the window, sizing them up.

Movement drew her eye, the flash of a door beyond her father’s desk, and Brienne huffed at Jaime’s impatience. She hauled her backpack onto her shoulder and made her way outside.

She heard the muffled scuff of his soles hitting her driveway as she cleared the corner. His form was indistinct behind two layers of tinted glass.

“Hey.” The word wasn’t quite breathless, but Brienne felt nervous anticipation creeping toward her windpipe. She quickened her pace, eating through the sidewalk before he managed to close his door.

Jaime paused, studying her over the hood of his car as she opened her door and pulled herself in. She slammed it closed to cover her misbehaving pulse.

“I was going to do that.” His complaint drifted through his open door. Brienne could see the exasperation in his eyes through the glare on the windshield. The glass did little to hide the satisfaction meandering up his cheekbones either.

She blushed as Jaime slid back into the car, distracting herself by wedging her bag past the center console to bunch under her feet. The bulk of it made her legs hitch, knees banging the dashboard, and Jaime rolled his eyes as he leaned over her lap to dig it out.

Her stomach dropped with him.

“Where are Tyrion and Cersei?”

Brienne winced as his cast jostled her leg, wondering if he even cared about his arm anymore.

“Catching a ride with mom.”

He tossed her backpack next to his and paused with his arm behind her chair. There was gravity in his eyes, primed to spill into a confession. He hesitated, lips parted, eyes binding her back against the leather.

Brienne’s breath caught. His left hand drifted from the wheel, ghosting across a bump by her hairline.

Jaime swallowed back his words with a grimace.

“I should have hit him harder,” he grunted, retreating to his side of the car. He jostled the gearshift into drive.

Brienne’s attention caught on the shallow, discolored dent in his red plaster forearm, a testament to Kyle’s assault.

Her temple sported a bruise from Ron’s check, the mottled color half camouflaged by the scrape from her helmet. Brienne was used to blemishes—zits and hits and blisters—but her teeth clenched as her skin shifted around the soft spot. Her eyes darted from the red indentation on Jaime’s cast to her own reflection in the dropdown mirror. Her brittle fringe distorted the defect, making her stomach burn. She stubbornly dug a rubber band from her pocket, yanking her hair into a sloppy ponytail.

Jaime didn’t comment. He didn’t need to. His eyes simmered, flickering green as her reflection’s flashed blue. A proud smile stole across his mouth.

There was a sense of immediacy in approaching West Eros High from the senior side, like knowing an artist’s life story before examining the painting. The main doors were splayed wide, beckoning its eldest students onward. Teens were streaming and milling and clustering, deceptively relaxed amidst the daily greetings. The sunrise haloed the scene like the start of a horror movie: warm, yellow and pink sunshine belying the shadows that could descend without warning.

“Don’t tell me you’re scared of that,” Jaime snorted, nodding to a distant, slender junior giggling at Robb Stark as he walked by, unaware. Brienne was sure the girl had said something hurtful the day before, but she couldn’t recall what it was.

“I’m not scared,” she mumbled, obstinate, and shoved out of the car to add veracity to her claim.

“Good,” he said evenly.

Brienne eased around the Rover to meet him. His eyes flickered to her hands, wrapped tight in the straps of her backpack. Her limbs seemed disconnected from the signals she tried to send, unwilling to yield that last bit of security.

She shrugged helplessly and Jaime sighed, pressing his shoulder against the rigid muscles of hers. The warmth diffused through her skin, spread by her quickening pulse. Peace and apprehension were so mingled in her veins that she could no longer tell which emotion Jaime had evoked.

“Thanks,” she mumbled, tightening her fists until the weave bit into her flesh. The hum of voices seemed loud in the crisp morning air, like a swarm of bees that might surround her before she spotted their approach.

He didn’t offer platitudes, and Brienne was grateful.

“You know I care what they think about as much as you care about cotillion.”

Brienne managed a brief, perfunctory smile that vanished before it had a chance to settle.

“Don’t talk about cotillion,” she said flatly. She wasn’t entirely sure that she was joking.

Jaime laughed anyway, and the sound cleared the buzz from her ears. She watched a bit of her anxiety break away and flit across the parking lot like crumpled notes discarded after an exam. He nudged her with his elbow, shoulder bumping rhythmically against hers as she steeled her spine and crossed the street.

The first voice assaulted them before Brienne cleared the bus lane.

“Oh, ho!”

The familiar chuckle made her blood freeze. Jaime went rigid beside her, but Brienne felt her limbs turn to stone. After a second Jaime’s fingers scrabbled atop hers, searching for purchase while she throttled the straps of her book bag.

“Looks like Jaime Lannister broke off a piece.” Kyle Hunt lounged on the wall beside the steps to watch their arrested approach, amused and unconcerned. The sight of him made her tongue swell, a sticky, invasive memory pervading her mouth. She could taste blood, sharp and acrid on her teeth. “Tell me: does she taste as good as I remember?”

She jerked away on impulse, swallowing hard as Jaime’s fingers tripped and slipped from hers. She couldn’t fathom why Kyle was there. He wasn’t supposed to return to school in the middle of the week, unannounced and unrepentant. He wasn’t supposed to accost her.

Jaime lunged at Kyle. The same violent urge blistered the sinew of Brienne’s muscles, eroding her instincts. Kyle recoiled, eyes on the red-etched lions that had savaged him.

Her hand grasped Jaime’s shoulders, yanking him back with more force than she would’ve thought necessary. His muscles tensed, quivering under her palms.

Kyle settled back as though nothing had happened, smiling lazily as he glanced around the broken conversations to make sure West Eros High was fixed on the spectacle.

“Leash your housecat,” he joked at Brienne. “One taste of hellcat was enough for me.” He raised his brows, eyes drifting toward parts of her that made her want to vomit.

Laughter swelled as if scripted. Kyle didn’t need to finish his insinuation for everyone to hear the word and lob it at her. Crudities clawed her back, leaving burning trails in the rents.

Jaime jolted under her fingers, almost slipped her grip. She hissed his name under her breath and held firm until he stopped tugging against her restraint. Jaime stilled, became a taut wire alive with energy.

“Call me crazy,” he retorted, missing offhand entirely. “I like to date girls, not assault them.”

“Brienne enjoys love bites.” Kyle caught his lip between his teeth, licked away the suggestion.

“She does!”

Brienne and Jaime turned as one. Her hands dropped to catch in his elbows, making them a smaller target. The boy grinning at them had a hooknose, wiry hair, and eagerness in his eyes. She didn’t know who he was.

“But kiss quick, Lannister. She’s hard to pin down for long.”

Kyle and the boy exchanged a loaded glance, and the pieces came together in a sick swirl of clarity.

Brienne looked over her shoulder, fighting the angry moisture flecking her eyes. Cersei loitered behind a cluster of baseball players, alone and seemingly unconcerned by the show, but her attention was fixed on Brienne. Upturned lips gave her face a sinister kind of satisfaction; to Brienne it looked fixed into place. The senior’s jaw was tight, back ramrod straight as she feigned disinterest.

Jaime hadn’t budged. Brienne remembered the way his body protected her that night, deflecting Cersei’s bitter promises. They’d ricocheted off his shield and clung to her anyway.

She refocused on the boys, willing her weakness away.

“I don’t know you,” she told the stranger through clenched teeth.

He blinked, shifting on his sneakers, clearly not expecting such a barefaced denial.

“She can’t even remember you, Oz,” Kyle teased him. “Has it been that many weeks?”

Brienne turned to Hunt, suddenly sure. “Don’t make me report you for sexual assault.”

He leaned forward, gathering the audacity to shrug and joke and twist her words to suit his meaning.

Brienne wasn’t listening. She jerked her hand from Jaime’s elbow and burrowed her fingers against his palm.

Jaime’s gaze flickered down to their tangled hands. Brienne clung to him so tenaciously that she felt a single breath might snap her in two. Jaime only resisted for half a tug before his feet were moving toward the door, matching her slow, deliberate pace past her tormentors.

Whispers erupted after them, tantalizing tendrils licking at her ankles. Brienne ignored the voices that trailed them, told herself she didn’t care.

Renly lingered by a row of lockers just inside the door. His mouth tightened in concern as his feet wavered, unsure about how to proceed. Familiar brown eyes assessed Brienne: her set jaw, her damp eyes, her death grip on Jaime’s hand. Sunlight caught the metal frame of the front doors, distorting the scene outside. Renly squinted at it, a rare frown working across his features.

“Brienne?”

He took a chance and met her eyes.

Brienne blinked at him, lashes sticking together.

“Are you alright?”

Jaime glared at him and Renly snapped lowly, “I’m not obtuse,” without looking at him.

“Then get with the damage control,” Jaime ordered, pushing Brienne into an empty office.

She waved the other boy off, pressed her lips when he set his stance and strode out into the fray. Jaime closed the door, erasing Renly behind the distorted glass of the small, square window.

“I’m fine,” she insisted, keeping the bile at bay through sheer determination.

“Clearly.”

She felt Jaime’s hand spasm under hers. Brienne unclenched her fist and yanked her fingers free.

“Oh, I get it. I’m your stress outlet.” Jaime flexed his fingers dramatically.

“Sorry.” She felt sick and furious and so small. She didn’t have room for embarrassment.

“You should’ve let me punch him.”

“You’ve already done that,” she countered. Her eyes were glued to his cast, like she could recreate the fight in her head if she only stared hard enough.

“You should have punched him,” he amended roughly, tracing the dent from Kyle’s head with the pads of his fingers.

“I would have gotten expelled.”

But she wanted to. Even now her body was itching to stomp back outside and face the crowd, if only to leave Kyle bleeding. The torrent of frustration threatened to drown her more sensible thoughts.

“They could’ve tried to expel you.” His smile was careless, but steel undercut the curve of it.

“Cersei would make sure of it.”

And there it was, dumped on the floor at their feet. Indistinct tears still itched Brienne’s eyes, but she ignored them stubbornly.

“You knew what she was planning.” The words were an accusation, flung in place of her fist, Jaime’s face instead of Kyle’s.

“I spent the weekend running interference,” he snapped. “So yeah, I figured she was scheming something.”

Her throat felt raw, the skin beneath her eyes swollen, but Brienne pushed on doggedly. “Why didn’t you warn me?”

“I tried,” he retorted. Incredulous and exasperated and angry. Smarting from her default setting of mistrust. “There’s only so much I can do, Brienne.”

And he was right.

Brienne thought of the longest 2 days of her life, hiding in her room while missed calls shivered up her leg. She had nearly lost her sanity picturing Cersei’s reaction, remembering the resentment in every furious burst of the crimson dress stalking circles around perfect hips. Then she pushed past the memories and through the Lannister gate. Imagined Jaime pacing his cavernous foyer, muttering into her mailbox while Cersei spit vitriol from the top of the stairs.

Brienne sagged into a chair, her judgments at his feet.

“I’m being unfair,” she said, biting her lip to stave off the guilt making tatters of her throat. “It’s not – I just – don’t know why you would . . .”

Jaime dropped into the chair beside her, letting momentum push the wheels back across the floor.

“Haven’t we gone through this?” he muttered, glaring at the bruise on her forehead. “I’m with you.”

Her stomach swooped, ground beneath the gravel in his voice.

“Or tell me to get lost.”

Her heart beat low and insistent, a hurricane that crashed in her throat and gusted through her ears. She opened her mouth, scrabbled for words, but they would not come.

Words were always deserting her.

Brienne planted her feet, rising with an intentionality she never quite managed outside the rink. Each step rooted her freshly to the ground, but she tugged her feet forward until her shoe bumped his. Her palms were sweaty as she extended a palm and waited, praying it would be enough.

Jaime eyed it with dubious dissatisfaction. “There’s nothing I can do about Cersei.”

She ignored the inner voice that screamed ‘too bold’ and wrapped her hand around the wrist on his thigh. He stayed stubbornly unresponsive, examining her skeptically, until she wedged her fingers between his and his leg.

A sigh escaped his lips, so faint she barely heard it, and his hand curled around hers.

“I know,” she acknowledged quietly.

She hauled him to his feet, pulse hammering erratically, and maneuvered him with their joined hands until his face was inches from hers. She meant to kiss him, to show him what she was willing to invest in this and him and them. But her nose dove towards his neck, and before she knew what was happening he had caught her up in his arms.

She sank into the embrace, goosebumps pricking from her scalp to her shins. The weight of the morning scurried away, evaporating in the stifling air around them.

“It’s going to suck,” he muttered, breath hot on her hair.

“It already does,” Brienne murmured, dragging her cheek along his collarbone until her chin dipped up to rest on his shoulder. Her back hunched under his broken arm, but his other arm wrapped lower, pulling her belly flush against him. Her heart dipped, and she cleared her throat to admit, “It’s worth it.”

She wasn’t expecting a response, but when he snaked his cast from around her back and coaxed her face from his shoulder, she knew what was coming. His breath soothed and thrilled her, dancing across her lips like a promise. It made it hard to remember that kissing Jaime in an abandoned administrative office qualified as a very bad idea.

His head dipped and Brienne sank forward to meet him.

A squeak echoed around the door, jerking them apart like marionettes manipulated by the sound.

Dread dropped heavy in her stomach. Brienne squeezed her eyes shut, breathing heavily, though her lips hadn't even brushed his.

She forced her eyes back open to look at him. There was trepidation in that green gaze, and a challenge, too. Brienne bit her lip and tilted forward, brushing their temples together before retreating.

She swallowed hard. Her jaw set as she looked toward the door.

Sansa shuffled around the frame, rocking back on her spindly heels, trying to decide how to play her interruption.

Relief coursed through Brienne at the sight. She relaxed sideways, pressing back into Jaime with a small, unconscious smile.

Sansa brightened, shooting them a grin nearing giddy before muffling her pleasure with a press of curved lips.

“Renly and Margaery tag teamed the assholes outside,” she announced, fidgeting with her fingers in excitement or anxiety or revulsion. It was hard to tell with the broad smile still cracking the façade of her pretty cheerleader image. “The school is safe again.”

Brienne wasn’t stupid enough to believe that the whispers had stopped. She could only hope that Kyle was sufficiently cowed to stop harassing her in public.

Jaime slipped his arm around her waist, contracting his muscles briefly around her, instilling her with courage.

“Thanks, Sansa.”

Sansa glanced back and forth between Jaime and Brienne, from his ardent expression to hers and back. Their friend turned faintly pink; the color glowed high against her smooth, round cheekbones.

“I’ll be outside,” Sansa announced. From the corner of her eye, she darted another pleased look at Brienne as she slipped out, clicking the door shut behind her like she expected them to fall into each other’s arms.

Brienne burned at the thought. Jaime savored her embarrassment, drawing her hips back toward his while a smug smile crept across his handsome features.

She glanced back at the door, tried to extricate herself without squirming away.

"Hey, Brienne the Badass." He snorted at her uncoordinated attempts to slip his grip.

Brienne turned a glare on him, but it melted under the fervor in his eyes. She knew that look like she knew the smell of dry ice; had seen it countless times in countless games: Jaime squaring off against a brutal opponent and knowing he was better.

“Let’s show them what we’re made of.”

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback is cuddled and pampered and tucked away on a glass shelf in my heart. So, you know. Comment. ;)


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